


Satisfaction

by gogollescent



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 09:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17041364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: Signet looked around for Tender and was greeted, instead, by a guy with three arms—not a squid guy, but someone who had lost one arm and seen fit to add two squid ones—who wanted to order a drink. So it was that Signet learned she was on the wrong side of the bar.





	Satisfaction

BOOM BOOM went the club, with heartrending realism. Signet looked around for Tender and was greeted, instead, by a guy with three arms—not a squid guy, but someone who had lost one arm and seen fit to add two squid ones—who wanted to order a drink. So it was that Signet learned she was on the wrong side of the bar. Not liking to renege on a perceived duty, she mixed the guy a Talking Grasshopper.

She had no idea what a grasshopper was. Evidently, that didn’t matter; whatever part of the Splice she was in, it abstracted bartending to a set of color-coded hand gestures, requiring only excellent dexterity. Tender’s true name had transported her to a minigame.

“Hey!” said Tender, sliding the guy and his drink bodily to one side—oh, the bar stools were on rollers, she wasn’t just manipulating space. That was nice. “I haven’t seen you in forever. How long do you have?”

“Not this long, I thought,” said Signet, wiping her hands on a rag; she hadn’t intended to, but was still on bartender automatic. “I guess I’ve never tried teleporting inside the Splice.”

“Eesh, don’t put it like that.” Tender looked just awful. The slits in a black knit cap weren’t wide enough for her ears, and she had an actual cat nose and whiskers drawn on her face in marker. But she also looked, Signet had to allow, kind of great—her eyes might have been red-rimmed, her mascara (and whiskers) running, but the turtleneck had a boob window and, when she breathed in, the dusting of glitter on her cleavage winked like stars in atmosphere. Tender gave a sigh. “What’s up, buddy? Where are you coming from?”

Signet shrugged. “I was worried about you,” she lied. “You look terrible.” Now wasn’t the time to focus on the positive, clearly.

“Worried—yeah. Okay. Yeah, Fourteen died.” Tender spread her arms in a big, expansive ‘what can you do?’ “Like, what the fuck? But what can you do, right?”

“I… guess so. How are you holding up?”

“I come here a lot,” said Tender. “Fourteen was like you. They hated the Splice. Well, not hated it, but they never came here. I think they thought it was going to lure them away from… themselves, something like what happened the first time, when they signed up with Castlerose. Curiosity killed the… you know? _If_ that’s why they did it the first time. They never told me. I don’t think they could remember.”

“I know something about that,” said Signet. “I mean, about them not remembering. I know about the disease, I don’t know about Castlerose. Frankly I hope never to know anything about Castlerose.”

“What?” said Tender, her attention sharpening. “What do you know about Fourteen?”

“Fourteen's disease. It was a thing from Curiosity. It was a gift, of sorts—back when the procedure was first introduced, preserving people as data. In case they got tired of it. In case they were done with forever. And also… it was supposed to restore a sense of wonder. Sometimes people don’t learn the right way the first time, and that—that can get in the way of you _ever_ learning, if you fuck that up once. So what if you forgot? Then you have the chance to get it right. Like new.”

Tender wasn’t making eye contact, but she was watching Signet, all the same: watching her hands, watching her mouth. Watching her forehead, actually, as it puckered and smoothed out, something Signet was aware of because it was a skill she practiced—making her expressions legible from far off, bracketing silence with a mask of hesitance. As though she were actually thinking about what she said before she said it. Which sometimes, she was. “Where did you learn that?”

“Belgard knew,” said Signet. “So for a long time I didn’t know why I knew, and dismissed it. Since I thought she was dead. I thought it was a baseless intuition.”

“How funny,” said Tender, flat as old soda. “I wonder if you would have mentioned it. Like, on a planet where that wasn’t true.”

“Maybe not,” Signet admitted. “It seemed counterproductive to say ‘By the way, don’t fuck it up twice.’ They were doing a fine job on their own.”

“Yeah?”

Signet had run out of patience. To simulate a moment of benediction, she reached out and held the back of her hand to Tender’s cheek. She fantasized about suggesting they have sex, then said, entirely by accident, “Do you want to have sex?”

“Oh, _weird_ ,” said Tender. “Weird, weird, weird.” She stared into the middle distance for a minute, cross-eyed. “Yes.” Her mouth was trembling. But she looked right at Signet and her lips went firm, and, surprisingly, she licked her lips, which was such a naturalistic catgirl move that it almost made Signet momentarily believe Tender’s insane drunk lies about having come from a catgirl lineage. Before she could come out and say that, too, Tender kissed her—Tender smashed right into her, head-on and nose to nose, rudely enough that Signet felt justified in bending her backwards, over her own bar. “Arghh,” said the guy with squid arms.

Here we are, Signet thought later, with her hands down Tender’s pants. Second time round. Better than new. But wait! We forgot to forget!


End file.
